


A Logical Explanation

by linguafranka



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Gay Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Cross-Generational Friendship, Episode Remix, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Slow Build, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2017-12-26 17:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguafranka/pseuds/linguafranka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A municipally-approved collection of Carlos the scientist's experiences and observations during his first year in Night Vale, with a chorus of angels, radio station interns, secret police incognito, a human-sized praying mantis, and that charming stalker in the furry pants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I - III

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [Lorata](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata) for the beta <3

I

Carlos is staring dubiously at his plate of 'invisible pie' in an all-night diner on his first evening in town, on break from standing around and looking puzzled at the house-that-isn't-there, when a smooth voice on the radio professes his love for him. Carlos discovers that even in the country's most scientifically interesting community the ground will not open up to swallow you as a result of your public mortification. That takes, as he will observe a few weeks from now when walking past a 10-year-old's birthday party being assailed by a tyrannosaur, abject terror.

"He grinned, and everything about him was perfect," the speakers by the ceiling say relentlessly. "And I fell in love _instantly_."

Across the table from Carlos, his assistant Danielle bites her lip to keep from laughing, which is good for her career. The speaker continues on about a bogus waterfront park. Carlos sighs, pushes his empty plate away and signals the waitress with increasingly huge gestures.

"Check, please," he says, and frowns when the woman crosses her arms and stomps away behind a mint-painted door.

It's not exactly politically correct or open-minded, Carlos thinks as the man on the radio segues into a parody of the NRA, to present the town newcomer as the focus of a mocking gay crush. He wonders if this clown is one of the faces he saw at his town meeting slash powwow about the sunset's inexplicable delay. He tries to recall anyone sticking out but only comes up with the kindly, religious old lady with the corn muffins; the wall of women and men in crisp suits who tracked his and Danielle's every move; the guy with the squeaky voice who asked them about the clocks; and the Caucasian man in the Native American headdress who'd suggested it was an ancient Indian curse. He guesses it could be that last guy--he kind of screamed un-PC jackass.

Danielle's shoulders shake when the DJ again describes Carlos' hair as perfect in the course of reporting on events for which no one outside the team of scientists had been present. Carlos makes a mental note to remind the others of the terms of their confidentiality agreements, scowling when the man on the radio blithely mentions said professionals daring one another to knock on the inexistent house's door.

The waitress returns to slap the check onto the rings of condensation left by Danielle's glass of ice water. She wanders back to her place behind the counter and ignores them as they sort out bills and coins and leave.

They check in with Lily Chang, the geology lecturer from Night Vale Community College who'd volunteered to take shifts at their seismic monitoring station. The monitors, of course, refuse both to display any data that makes sense and to be in anything other than perfect condition. It is possible they are working better than he's ever seen; their cases look shinier and their software is much better than he remembers. On the drive back to the city center he calls in the malfunction to the university anyway, expecting and receiving a complete lack of concern. He angrily disconnects the call, wishing his smartphone had keys to punch. Danielle turns on the radio and fiddles the dial away from the programmed Californian stations that churn out only static.

"...an endless void could be," the voice from before says and Carlos groans. "Carlos says that they have double-checked the monitors..." He describes the conversation that Ms Chang and Carlos just had. What does this DJ have, Carlos ponders as he detours suddenly onto the short road that leads to the radio tower building, mafia connections?

He's not sure what he plans to do when he finds the DJ--Wear his carpal tunnel wrist braces like gauntlets and threaten to beat him with them? Create a new criteria for diagnosis for the DSM and scientifically prove he's an asshole?--and Danielle and her raised eyebrows clearly know it. Carlos may not know how to convince people to do things or to like him out of anything but exasperation, but he won't stand for some hick taking cheap shots at his job and/or sexuality and/or hairstyle, because gray temples look dignified, and Carlos took whatever dignity he stumbled upon, it'd gotten him his grant after all--

 _Beeeeeeeeeep_ , goes the radiation detector in the back seat, lights flashing. Carlos stops the car, tires squealing. Danielle climbs into the back and peers at the readout. She gulps, her hands and the machine falling to her lap.

So instead of charging into Night Vale Community Radio to break his hand on some jerk's face, Carlos charges into Night Vale Community Radio to demand that the bemused intern playing a video game at the front desk whose name tag reads 'Chad' call for an evacuation.

"Dude, huh?" Chad says, blinks slowly and takes a sip of his soy mochaccino (order written on the side of his paper cup in the shorthand Carlos had picked up working as a barista during undergrad).

"You're all in grave danger!" Carlos tries.

 _BEEEEEEEP_ , insists the machine in his hand.

"Dude... nah," Chad judges, unpausing his game boy. Carlos nearly screams through the Super Mario theme.

A door down the hallway opens and the device practically vibrates apart with all the impossible figures it's suddenly spitting at him. And because Carlos is a scientist and the unexplainable must be investigated, he brushes past the man who's just exited the soundproof booth and dashes toward the source of the readings. Which turns out to be a microphone.

"Carlos," the DJ squeaks, standing next to a water fountain. The part of Carlos' brain that is not desperately trying to remember how many millisieverts one can be exposed to without health risks recognizes him as the man who'd asked why sunset was late today. The man clears his throat, cheeks flushed, then asks in a deep radio voice, "May I ask what you're investigating?"

"There's--materials--'m testing the place--" Carlos says, flailing with his free hand for emphasis when the words come out garbled. The machine gives a whistle that's more like a scream with vibrato. The man tilts his head, as if listening carefully.

"Would you like to stay for an interview?" he tries at the same time Carlos yells, "Run away! Evacuate before it's too late!" and follows his own advice. He doesn't stop until his car is parked down the highway, well outside of the radius his machine can detect. He and Danielle take turns watching those exiting the station building through binoculars, searching for evidence of radiation poisoning. They continue their vigil for hours that drag on slightly longer than his Casio says they ought. The last of the evening shift exchanges places with the night shift and leaves, whistling and loading a chainsaw into her trunk and definitely not dying.

"Sometimes symptoms are delayed," Carlos begins, then realizes he's hoping for the agonizing deaths of a full radio station crew so that he won't be wrong. His forehead makes a satisfying sound smacking against his steering wheel.

Danielle shakes her head. "Equipment malfunction," she says like she's trying to convince herself. She shakes her head again and returns the binoculars to the glove compartment.

There's a logical explanation for everything in the universe, Carlos reminds himself at three o'clock in the morning, lying in his new bed and staring at plastered-over cracks in the ceiling. Nothing is beyond the ability of science to quantify and find reason behind. Science is observation leading to the formation of hypotheses and experiments, the results of which, if repeatable within an acceptable margin of error, could be used to write theories. Everything observable falls within the domain of science, and therefore the domain of logical explanation. There's a logical explanation for everything...

The next morning, when Carlos is unpacking his coffee maker, a human-sized praying mantis with a pink bow around her neck rings the doorbell and introduces herself as Hiromi, his neighbor from across the street.

*

The following Saturday, the engine disappears from Carlos' car.

No, really, it literally disappears. He and Danielle watch it fade from existence over the course of forty-seven minutes, taking copious voice memos on his iPhone and poking the area with a yard stick to measure how much resistance a discorporeating object gives at various stages of its evanescence. At first it feels like mixing up thick fudge, but soon grows more semisolid, like a jello cube that's been mashed. It's utterly fascinating, so much so that he forgets for a time that the result is going to be that his car will have _no engine_.

...Well. He'd been meaning to replace the rust bucket anyway.

Carlos sends Danielle to borrow Hiromi's phone book, as no Night Vale numbers seem to be in the online yellow pages, and pats her back awkwardly through her panicked asthma attack. There's only one car lot and it's a bit of a trip, so Hiromi's husband Nazr offers to lend them his hatchback. They go after Danielle ODs on albuterol and can inhale without making that scraping sound. Carlos can't think of a way to ask whether her hands are shaking because of the praying mantis thing or just her inhaler, so he turns on the stereo and puts in ABBA's Greatest Hits, the most calming CD he can find--the rest are ACDC, Metallica and More Bloodstone Chants, Volume III.

"How do you deal with it?" Danielle asks several minutes later, seat shoved back as far as it will go, head between her knees.

Carlos shrugs one shoulder, worryingly unsure why he's not cracking right there alongside her. "Denial?"

"Feel the beeeeat from the tambouriiiiiiiiine," ABBA suggests.

Carlos finds and eventually settles on a suitably boring 3-year-old hybrid and springs for more breathable leather seats, remembering how his skin had practically fused to the vinyl of his old junker in the desert sun even after airing the thing out. On second thought, he tosses one of those folding reflective windshield things on the counter next to his credit card. The salesman, who may not be able to speak, swipes the card and hands Carlos a stylus for his signature with one hand while he clearly uses two other hands to bag the reflector. When not in motion he seems to have the normal number of limbs. Willing himself not to stare creepily, Carlos nudges Danielle with his elbow.

"Knock knock!" calls an elderly lady from the automatic doorway, weathered black face crinkled into a smile. A basket hovers behind her shoulder, supported by an indistinct figure that stoops to fit its wings inside the room. Carlos' eyes, watering, fail to bring the shape into focus. The lady hobbles quickly over on her cane. "Oh, you're those scientists. Hello again. Josie Richardson," she introduces herself with the sort of handshake you'd expect from a Fortune 500 CEO. "Offer the nice man and lady a corn muffin, Erika. The rest are for you, George."

The salesman bows fancily to Mrs. Richardson in thanks while the shape thrusts the basket under Carlos' nose. Carlos pulls two tissues from the pouch he keeps in his pocket for his allergies and takes one muffin each for himself and Danielle, murmuring politely. The muscles behind his eyes ache, barely making out the wings flattening against what must be the figure's back. He wipes at his nose. A drop of blood comes away.

Settling into a wheeled office chair Salesman George brought out for her, Mrs. Richardson asks, "You starin' at Erika because she's naked?"

"Is she naked?" Carlos wonders absently, then goes red as Mrs. Richardson cackles at him. The figure makes a sound like a building collapsing in on itself in a fire and Danielle abruptly sits on the sales counter. The sound repeats a few times in steadily lowering tones--laughter, Carlos realizes, not sure what lead to that conclusion. He chokes down his muffin, the least bizarre or embarrassing option.

Mrs. Richardson swats the figure on the part closest to her, which is its knee, saying, "Go on and put those in the kitchen. Get!" she pronounces sternly. The figure puts the bottom of its face over her forehead--a kiss?--and wanders off along with the salesman. Mrs. Richardson politely waits for Danielle to finish another dose of her inhaler before asking, "You two gettin' along in town alright? Doin' your science-y things?"

"Yes, ma'am," Danielle replies, taking her own pulse and no heed of the untouched corn muffin by her hand that's earning her the side-eye.

"We're soliciting townspeople to fill out a basic questionnaire about daily life, if you'd like to participate, Mrs. Richardson. We need as wide a pool of participants as possible."

"And there ain't that many old coots, I know." She crosses her arms, staring Carlos down over her glasses. "Call me Old Woman Josie and I'll do it."

Danielle's fingers drop from her carotid. "...You _want_ to be called 'Old Woman'?"

"You got a problem with that, missie? Eat yer muffin!" She mutters about ungratefulness until Danielle finishes, then looks between the two of them. "We got a deal?"

"Of course," says Carlos, pausing awkwardly when the scrutiny doesn't let up. "Of course... Old Woman Josie?"

Old Woman Josie nods in satisfaction and takes a business card out of her purse. _Old Woman Josie Richardson_ , it reads, and in small point font underneath, _Don't call me Mrs. Richardson_. Then, in even larger text, _Speaker for the Angels and Winner of Greater Night Vale Area West Wing Trivia Night_. On the back is her phone number.

"The West Wing?"

"Best damn fantasy show on television," Josie pronounces. Carlos fights back the urge to laugh hysterically.

"I like it, too," he manages finally as the headache-inducing slenderbeing and salesman return.

"Then you've got good taste, Mr. Scientist." She knocks him on the shoulder with her elbow and uses his forearm to balance before picking up her cane. "Mind you, if you're gonna stare like that, I'm making Erika wear a sweater next time. Didn't yer mama teach you better?"

Carlos closes his eyes in humiliation and yelps, "That's not what I--"

"Call me and let me know when's good for your question thing." She's already at the door, tiny body obscured by the edges of wings that catch the sunlight outside and scatter it like crystal. Tears run down Carlos' cheeks. He squints and they're gone.

The salesman boredly shoves the keys to Carlos' new car into his hands. His other hand is holding a plate under his chin to catch crumbs from the muffin he's holding up to munch on. He may also be texting. Carlos rubs the bridge of his nose, resettles his glasses, takes Danielle's arm and goes out to the parking lot. In the middle of the space where he'd parked the al-Mujaheeds' station wagon is a sign that reads, _Returned to lender. Have a nice day, or else! :)_

And while that's probably for the best, as Danielle isn't quite fit to drive, Carlos still really wishes Wonderland came with an instruction manual, or at least an EULA. As it is, his background check hasn't even cleared him for access to a copy of the municipal laws he's meant to be following.

He presses the button to unlock the doors and the car makes a gong sound instead of the usual cheerful chirping. He closes his eyes, prays to no one that he'll be able to drive home without the seats coming alive and trying to eat him and climbs in the car.

*

II

His uncle's birthday is coming up, so Carlos goes and buys a card from the drug store, avoiding the syringe of a mysterious, gray liquid that descends on a robot arm from the ceiling with a deftness he'd never have believed of himself a few short weeks ago. The card itself has a hologram of a man in a birthday hat being mauled by a bear, which is not what he'd normally have chosen, but the paper taped to the boarded-up Hallmark store at the local strip mall had read, "Closed due to venomous rabbit infestation. Sorry for any inconvenience!" and Tío Marco had always had a sick sense of humor, anyway.

The post office is enveloped in a perimeter of yellow tape that proclaims "DANGER" in many languages, including one script that undulates like worms. The guy in the feathered headdress is skulking around across the street with his coat collar turned up in a way Carlos supposes he means to be inconspicuous. The breeze kicks up and Carlos smells blood.

On a hunch he takes that afternoon off and drives until he finds a small town whose post office doesn't give off an aura of despair.

*

By the time Carlos steels himself to visit the Arby's, Danielle is refusing to wander from the path between the lab and her apartment. Meanwhile, Carlos has gone through all the stages of paranoia and emerged back out on the other side, dulled to the possibilities of viscera-strewn animal sacrifices and portals to great beyonds populated by incomprehensible horrors, ready for anything.

The Arby's rises to the challenge admirably: it is a normal Arby's.

Carlos slides into a booth near the counter, sits at the edge of his hard plastic seat and clutches his receipt for a roast beef sandwich and onion rings until the edges are all crinkled. The linoleum flooring is cheap and scuffed, as are the tiles along the bottom of the diamond pattern on the counter front. The florescent light over the bathroom hallway flickers steadily on and off in a dying cycle. The teenage boy wearing the drive-thru headset leans against the wall and plucks at the bottom of his uniform polo shirt in distaste. Outside, the stetson logo glows steadily at passers by, not menacing nor cheerful nor cheerfully menacing, because it is a neon sign and, like all inanimate objects, cannot feel.

"Roast beef and onion rings," the teenage boy drawls boredly. Carlos jumps, whacking his knee on the edge of the table. Several people look over, and a little girl at the next booth giggles.

The ketchup dispenser dispenses ketchup and the napkins available next to it are just as waxy and ineffectual as at every other fast food restaurant in their great country. With a shaking hand, Carlos brings an onion ring to his lips and takes the tiniest bite. Slippery onion, greasy batter and too much salt. He puts it down, feeling a headache of his own making form, and retrieves a small notebook and #2 pencil from his lab coat pocket.

 _June 26th_ , he writes in the spiky letters that drive Danielle nuts. He shields his eyes from the flickering bathroom hall light and rubs his strained temporalis. _The subjectivity of experiences, as influenced by one's expectations--_ is as far as he gets before being tackled by someone who claws at and then desperately flings the pencil away from them, shouting " _Nooooo!_ " in a fully dramatic fashion as they do so. Onion rings soar through the air and the roast beef sandwich slumps sideways into its various components like a deck of cards sliding to the side.

"The hell?" Carlos exclaims, trying to right his glasses where they've gone askew and climb back up from where he's been pushed half under the table. The tackler slaps Carlos' notebook from the table top for good measure, then turns back to him with panic in his eyes. He's average looking, or would be if he weren't wearing pants that look to be sewn from the same material as Carlos' grandmother's green shag carpet. This is, Carlos realizes with a sense of foreboding, the man from the radio station.

"Don't gamble with your life," radio man whispers, clasping Carlos' hand in earnest concern. His elbows are digging into Carlos' ribs. Everyone in Arby's has turned to stare at them or the scattered writing implements and food.

Carlos tries to start a sentence, stammers and resembles a red snapper ( _Lutjanus campechanus_ ) in color and gape.

The man from the radio station coughs, stands up, tugs Carlos upright with a hand on his shoulders, spins and holds his hands out toward the denizens of Arby's. "This has been a demonstration on behalf of the Werewolf Attack Prevention Network," he says, voice like the smoothest Irish cream stirred lovingly through Blue Mountain coffee. "Fifty-eight percent of werewolves initiate their attacks with a sideways lunge. Are you ready? Visit the Night Vale WAPN's website to schedule self-defense lessons and purchase your own werewolf voodoo doll. Thank you." He sits down decisively across the booth.

Carlos gazes into his strewn supper as a prognosticator divining the future from the strewn ashes of animal bones. The ketchup and mustard splotch kind of looks like a Pomeranian, if Pomeranians had elephant trunks. Maybe they do in Night Vale. Eventually the background noise returns to pre-tackle levels and Carlos chances a glance up. The man in the fuzzy trousers is looking at him with the sort of absentminded focus favored by lions toward zebras or seniors toward freshmen wearing promise rings. Not sure how uncomfortable he is or ought to be at being cast as someone's personal challenge, Carlos clears his throat. "I stand by my previous question."

The man blinks out of his reverie. "Huh?"

"'What the hell?'" he quotes himself, crossing his arms and, when the man looks blank, "Do you frequently attack people who are minding their own business?"

Radio Man covers his eyes and takes a breath. "Is that what you'd call what you were doing?" He sounds recriminatory, which is... well, _weird_.

"I'd describe what I was doing, 'Ingesting fast food and being assaulted.'"

"And _writing_."

"...yes?"

"With a _pencil_. And a _notebook!_ "

Carlos is absolutely lost. "Yes?" he tries again.

The man shakes his head vigorously, hand still over his eyes. "I understand how authorities elsewhere might, when faced with such an Adonic stature as yours, be inclined to forgive, but all members of the Sheriff's Secret Police have their empathy and appreciation for beauty removed as an initiation rite--"

"That's not possible," Carlos comments automatically.

"--and the bad boy mentality was criminalized last August after Antonio Lizzi and the rest of the Sunshine Mafia infected the old folks' home and hospice with it to provoke an uprising and the Sheriff's Secret Police had to round them up and electrocute them, so no matter how scintillating your tempestuous nature may be--"

Carlos can't help it: he cracks up, slapping a hand over the right side of his face and laughing himself into hiccups when Radio Man finally peeks out from behind his hand and squeaks like an infatuated cartoon character at whatever he sees. Apparently he was covering his eyes to be able to talk. A man with a voice like Belgian chocolate and disturbingly totalitarian assumptions about jurisprudence, struck alternatingly dumb and babbling by a 34-year-old scientist with congruent obsessive tendencies and neglected physical features. It's all so absurd, Carlos laughs until his diaphragm aches and he's smearing tears from his eyelashes, which is akin to the second coming, judging by the rapture on Radio Man's face.

When he can speak again, Carlos prompts, "Pencils?"

"Need a license," the man breathes from cloud nine.

"Notebooks, too?"

The man nods.

"Right." Carlos runs a hand through his hair, stops halfway through when that makes the man collapse limply against his seat back. "Right. I'll need a license, then. I don't suppose y--" He frowns. "May I ask your name?"

The man's eyes are wide as saucers. "Cecil."

"Well, then, Cecil--" Carlos says and genially ignores the noise the man makes that would be more appropriate for the bedroom. He starts picking and mopping up the stray pieces of his meal, piling them on his tray. "I don't suppose you know how I can become a certified pen-pusher?"

Cecil bats his eyes at him, then with a start pats down all his pockets and pulls out a phone. He fiddles with it for a moment and holds it out with the browser open to the Night Vale City Council's website page with the appropriate application form. When Carlos had googled for the site on the drive to Night Vale nothing had come up. Carlos frowns. Normally he'd let officials know that their site has probably fallen victim to google bombing, but he isn't sure of the city council's uninvolvement.

"Would it be alright if I texted this link to myself?"

If it's possible to pass out from delight, Cecil looks on the verge. "Uh-huh!"

"Thanks." Carlos dials his number left-handed and gets his own phone out with his right just as it buzzes. The option to 'add contact' pops up. Carlos considers. And considers. And while he's still considering, Cecil blows back into whirlwind mode.

"Oh, I know, I'll give you all my contact information and then you can call me whenever you need or want or just feel like talking--" He plucks Carlos' phone from his hands, fingers blurring over the screen, and when he hands it back, beaming, Carlos has everything down to Cecil's mother's maiden name (for use in 'bloodstone summoning,' a new contact option that had added itself to his phone when he'd crossed the border into town).

Carlos thanks him again and deletes his own number from Cecil's outgoing messages history before returning the device. He scrapes the recesses of his socialization capabilities for a way to extract himself from this disquietingly normal chain restaurant and his stalker. "Well, this has been. Bizarre. Unexpected. Stranger than a blizzard in July." He slides the tray of ruined food to the end of the booth and himself after it.

"Snow..." Cecil sighs dreamily, cushioning his chin on clasped hands. "So even scientists believe in fairy tales."

"What fairy t--snow?" Carlos pauses. His interpretation of Night Valean non-sequiturs is improving, he notes when Cecil nods. "Snow isn't a fairy tale. It's all over the southern hemisphere and poles right now, not to mention areas of high elevation, like mountain peaks."

Cecil clucks his tongue knowingly, but apparently finds his rebuttal too obvious to put into words. From the corner of his eye Carlos sees a broom and dust pan march Fantasia-style out of a supply closet toward the rest of the onion rings on the floor nearby. It is the most reassuring thing he's seen in the past hour. Cecil and the other diners take no notice but are palpably alarmed when Carlos scoops up his notebook and pencil after disposing of his tray's contents. There is a collective sigh of relief when he puts them back in his pocket.

"You gotta order something or get out, man," the teenager in the headset is saying to Cecil when Carlos pushes out the door, to no reaction other than a swoon.

Carlos drives himself to the supermarket, barely noticing the ghost cars any more, and ladles himself some corn chowder from the deli soup cart after checking the ingredients list for allergens like shellfish or cyanide. Paying the cashier, whose arms aren't attached to her torso so much as floating nearby, he resolves not to go back to the Arby's for a while--it's just too weird.

*

About half a month into their stay Danielle arrives at the laboratory, speaking dazedly of a five-headed dragon breathing fire out on the highway, surrounded by police cars and assorted other people dressed in various costumes, including cacti, a boulder and three people--carefully balanced on each other's shoulders--as the Starbuck's sign.

"So they finally caught 'em at it, huh?" Old Woman Josie creaks, grinning over the questionnaire she's filling out electronically, because the lab's Writing Implement License is still being processed by the City Council. "I told Hiram, I said those insurance scams'd bite him in the ass!" She gives the tablet to a hand--the idea of which, Carlos has been reassured, does not lead to an aneurism so long as one doesn't stare too hard at the transcendental being in the maroon cardigan attached to it--and toddles over. She pokes Danielle's ankle with her cane. "What's he lookin' at, five years? Ten?"

"I'm... not sure," Danielle admits weakly.

"Well, that'll teach him, anyway. And you, too." Josie points at Carlos' chin, which is the closest to his eyes she can manage with her stoop. "Don't flaunt it around when you break the law unless you want the secret police to come out of hiding after you. Inn't that right, Rick?"

"Absolutely, ma'am!" says Carlos' lab table cheerfully.

Danielle moves back into her parents' house in Ohio the next morning.

Looking over his notes for that day--increasingly frantic scribbles about a cumulus-shaped cloud that glowed a gamut of colors, rained dead animals on the Old Town and forced Night Vale citizens to worship it, _none of which he remembers writing_ \--Carlos is not sure she had the wrong idea.

*

III

His safety glasses disappear every other Tuesday and possibly the first Friday of the month--Carlos is waiting for more data to confirm that hypothesis. It's more convenient than random disappearances, but still an inconvenience. He calls the university for them to send more pairs--hopefully their disappearance cycles will differ, leaving him with at least one pair at all times--and as a temporary solution searches for a sporting goods store with swim gear.

The used and discount place on Flint Drive looks promising, so Carlos pulls into the parking lot.

A young man runs out of the store, bells on the door clattering violently against the glass. He is clutching a tennis racket to his chest. His face is a mask of panic and dawning horror. Men and women with earpieces and sunglasses flood out after him. It looks like a staging by Matrix fans at a sci-fi convention, except Carlos recognizes the man as the blase intern from the radio station. His gameboy falls out of his pocket, screen cracking on impact with the tarmac. He brandishes and swings the tennis racket at the converging masses, and hits one across the face before another jabs him in the back of the neck with a tube of something, at which point he goes slack into their arms. His head lolls and hands jerk weakly in protest as they drag him back into the store. A minute later an unmarked black helicopter takes flight from the store's roof.

His gameboy lies there, abandoned.

Carlos pulls out of the parking lot and drives aimlessly for several minutes. Then he pulls over, takes out his phone and calls his family to tell them that he loves them.

"You're so weird," his little sister Nita tells him affectionately.

He answers shakily, "I'm okay with that."

*

Despite his taking the DJ's phone number, or maybe--with no implications of victim blaming--because of it, the radio harassment vaults to new heights every evening. Cecil strews about adjectives like, "refined," "beauteous," "comely" and even, "pulchritudinous" like a freshman assaulting a thesaurus for their first term paper. A gaggle of preteen girls sees him walking to the grocery store one morning and whispers loudly and giggles.

So later that day when he goes to pick up some Chinese takeout and sees the spinning, peppermint-colored pole, Carlos thinks, _why not?_ His hair is constantly flopping over his eyebrows and the tops of his ears, dripping sweat in the desert heat.

"How you want it, eh?" the barber asks, well-groomed mustache as bouncy as his accent.

" _Short_ ," says Carlos like a parched man would croak 'water,' and the barber laughs the way service workers do when you crack a weak joke. Carlos smiles back anyway.

He keeps lifting a hand to run fingertips over the short bristles at the back of his neck, which feels both strange and refreshing. This backfires on him in the evening when he's pouring from a jug of purple grape juice one-handed and the radio shriekingly demands a hit on whosoever put scissors to Carlos' hair.

Good thing he keeps spare lab coats, Carlos thinks with a sigh.

*

There was supposedly a creeping fear that spread through Night Vale for a few hours on Friday afternoon, but Carlos couldn't, if paid, extract that experience from his terror at the smell of decaying flesh that had wafted from his reference library in noxious gray-green clouds. Not to mention the sound of metal-on-metal when Volume IX of his encyclopedia snapped at his hand. The sparks had set a section of his carpet alight, though on the bright side the smoke had neutralized the poison fumes. He's since chained up his entire collection in the cupboard under the sink, with the exception of the seismology journal he's secured to his worktable with a vise for further study. Occasionally it growls.

"Fear is a perfectly natural reaction to homicidal literature," Carlos sulks over a plate of reheated lasagna that is fairly decent despite the unexpected caramel bits. "It's illogical for the town to invent a 'creeping fear' when there are plenty of legitimately frightening things here."

Old Woman Josie gives him an unimpressed look over her glasses. Her mission to feed him until he isn't skinny as a rail clearly doesn't impede her critical eye. "What's put that bee up your ass, then?" She taps her fork against the edge of her plate.

"I did not 'get what I deserve' for keeping books in my apartment!" Carlos explodes, fuming at the memory of the smug secretary at city hall who'd buffed his nails and smiled nastily about how maybe we ought to listen to the council's advice on the scourge of printed matter and not worry our pretty scientific minds over fears, creeping or otherwise, no? "They're books, not guns or swords or flesh-eating viruses. They're paper and ink and ideas, and I'm perfectly sane to expect them to continue to be those things, and to be concerned when they try to eat me."

Josie pats his hand consolingly, if a little condescendingly, and reassures him that of course neither weapons of the traditional or biological sort are comparable to books. She means that the books are much worse, of course, but she doesn't say so and soon changes the topic to Robert Lowe's pecs on the cover of Vanity Fair.

It's the little things Carlos appreciates.

*


	2. IV - VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos has sleep deprivation, encounters a pterodactyl, gains a pet, receives some useful advice, feels exasperated, has sibling trouble and unwillingly donates $100.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [Lorata](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata) for helping me come up with tech-the-tech speak, beta-ing, and cheerleading through her own NaNo project. She is a BAWSS.

IV

When he got his research funding, Carlos had been thinking of getting a dog. A nice suburban community is the perfect place to keep a dog for company when you don't have a family, he’d reasoned. A cocker spaniel or a shiba inu might be nice. Something not too yappy or too big, smart enough to be trainable, that would bound joyfully around the dog park and make him smile.

That plan fell through, for obvious reasons. The garden of fanged lavender shrubs that came with his house is good at keeping Carlos vigilant and triumphant, though, if not necessarily happy.

*

"Town meetings are compulsory for all new residents of Night Vale," Officer Rick informs Carlos the day he wraps up his in-person surveillance period of Carlos' laboratory. He fills a prodigious stack of boxes with cameras, wire tapping equipment, bugs and a yellow plastic periscope with Fisher Price stamped on the side. Carlos offers to help carry them out to his police cruiser, and they play tetris a while before securing the trunk with bungee cords. Officer Rick smiles, thanks Carlos and doesn't give any reassurances that the surveillance equipment has all been removed. Carlos is unsurprised.

Carlos' copy of Municipal Laws and Regulations, his schedule of City Council Meetings and the cement brick they’re wrapped around with a rubber band crash through his front window the following afternoon, jarring him from time dilation calculations which suggest that a very tiny, superdense object must be producing substantial gravity nearby. The window repairs itself between his blinks of astonishment. Carlos' phone buzzes.

_Standard delivery procedure. See you Tuesday  
Officer R_

Carlos flips open the calendar and relaxes. Tuesday is a town meeting, not a scheduled abduction and interrogation like last time. He pins the calendar to the fridge with a magnet that reads _Microbiologists do it with culture_ , his thoughts already returning to the data.

It's less that he forgets about the meeting than that he forgets what day it is. There’s a massive temporal anomaly swelling near the city center, Carlos realized around sunset one day. Said anomaly isn't related to whatever causes time to run strangely in Night Vale in general, he discovered at lunch on what, logically, must have been at least the next day. An interminable stretch later—he really can't be blamed for losing track, it was a beautiful puzzle and also he'd been running on 2 hours of sleep and twizzlers by this point—Carlos built a black box attuned to the anomaly's fluctuations. Carlos isn't quite sure how it works—twizzlers always made him loopy and in Night Vale they give him lucid dreams—but the point is that it does. The black box works, it distinguishes the new type of time-related wonkyness from the residual, background crazy, and right now the black box is saying that it’s cloudy and the late Jurassic outside today, which is far more important than it being a Tuesday.

Unfortunately, it appears that in Night Vale, 'compulsory' means 'we will teleport you and anything you may be touching to the Town Hall if your posterior isn't in a cheap plastic chair at the stroke of six.' Carlos spares a moment to be impressed that they fit his now-empty workbench in here, then clenches his hands around the black box and his laptop as he imagines the state of all his other equipment back at his lab. He hopes to Linnaeus that this is one of those situations in which Night Vale courteously resets its own damage like a cartoon returning to status quo at the end of the episode. He also hopes he screwed the cap tightly onto that flesh-eating virus sample.

"Hear ye, hear ye!" shouts the mayor many times, though no one is talking. Carlos grits his teeth, typing notes one-handed. Next time, he vows, he’s bringing noise-cancelling headphones. "Our first item of business is the lead-plated door in Radon Canyon..."

He tries, he really tries to focus. This time anomaly is the most intriguing phenomenon Carlos has seen since the house that doesn’t exist, a beautiful mystery balanced between science and the mysticism that drew him to Night Vale in the first place. It deserves to be slowly unwrapped of its shrouding layers and taken apart into its requisite pieces. It is the Porche 911, Venus de Milo and Fibonacci sequence of research projects, begging to be wined and dined. And every time Carlos tries to coax coherence from its figures Mayor Winchell’s voice cracks through his concentration, the baseball bat of her crusade against a sensibly situated door smashing Carlos’ seduction to slivers.

It’s possible the twizzlers haven’t worn off yet.

Carlos doesn’t _want_ to focus on the mystery of why radiation doesn’t work in Night Vale—well, “work” implies that the killing and birth defects and whatnot are the goal instead of the side-effect; “doesn’t function the same way” would be more accurate but the wording is clunky, though perhaps the killing and whatnot _had_ been someone’s goal in Night Vale and now that person is put out at the lack of carnage. Carlos doesn’t want to focus on the knee-jerk reaction he still has to the word, the panic in his hind brain that insists quite rationally that radiation is very much not the way Carlos would choose to go. He doesn’t want to be distracted by how _piercing_ Mayor Winchell’s voice can be when her eyes skim over his corner of the room and she sees him typing. He doesn’t want to waste precious faculties—to redirect processing from his luxuriant puzzle that must surely feel like the other woman at this point—in order to compose a lengthy rant against the ignorance of the denizens who are in favor of the door’s removal, a rant which will never pass his lips because the group’s impassioned leader is Old Woman Josie and Carlos is quietly terrified of the idea of Josie with a vendetta.

_…and frankly—calculate half-life of the radiation emanating from the anomaly and divide by 365.242—if your parents let infant children play anywhere near—When the hell did Kimmeridgian become Tithonian?—a disposal site for nuclear waste, you have bigger problems—compensate for the degradation of Newton's Laws by running the formula through a discrete-Fourier Transform—than lead poisoning—_

“Who ever heard of someone dying ‘cause of _plutonium_?”

Carlos huffs and bodily turns as far from the podium as he can without scraping the table across the floor. This shift points the black box toward the south wall and Main Street, and the box’s display starts flashing data nearly too fast to read.

 _Oh, look_ , he thinks calmly while his body stands up and his stool topples. _There’s the apex_.

He can’t be sure—the calculations would be obsolete before he completed them—but at a guess Carlos would say a wormhole to 149 million years ago, give or take a megaannum, is forming in the middle of town.

“There’s no more time!” he says, eyes widening at the black box, and stumbles out the door. Carlos is 80% sure he doesn’t mean that statement literally, but who knows what’s going to happen to the flow of time once this wormhole opens. He has to stop it, stop Night Vale being torn apart by two time streams while its residents microwave themselves some popcorn and watch the show out their front windows. Carlos rubs his itchy, bloodshot eyes with the heel of his palm. He has to, has to—

He shouldn’t have denounced those twizzlers, Carlos realizes as he trips and lands in someone’s rock garden, sleep deprivation finally catching him up to sink its poisoned fangs in. The last thing he sees before his vision blurs and fades is the black box in his right hand churning through numbers that may as well be Linear A for all his failing mind can comprehend…

*

Carlos was 15 years old when he saw _Jurassic Park_ in theaters for the first time. He remembers the taste of cheap butter substitute on popcorn that he consumed and smeared down his shirt with a complete lack of focus because there were dinosaurs on screen, beautiful, terrifying dinosaurs with long necks and teeth the size of three fingers and cunning that defeated barricades and locks. He'd felt four years old again, bent over his favorite dinosaur coloring book, the one he'd made his mom buy seven copies of so he could scribble meticulously inside the lines with each of his seven crayola jumbo crayons as the dominant color in turn. He'd looked four years old, too, according to Hamida, who'd dumped him right there in the theater after the lights went up. Carlos had been on such a high he hadn't cared.

It has fur. That’s the first thing Carlos sees when his eyes blink open. He'd given up paleontology years ago in favor of branches of science with more immediately calculable value, but Carlos is pretty sure he'd read somewhere that dinosaurs actually had feathers, not fuzzy bat wings. It also has a wingspan about four times that of an average pterodactyl and is sky blue with black around its beak. In any case, it's incongruous to the mental image he's never managed to banish of pterodactyls flying outside a helicopter window, skimming over the cresting waves, marbled wings warm like browned butter in the sunlight.

What an amazing way to wake up.

What a god awful way to wake up. Adrenaline shoots through Carlos’ heart.

The pterodactyl eyes Carlos sideways with one eye, shifts from hind legs to fore and snaps warningly. Viscera that may be human is caught between its teeth. It stares as Carlos crawls to a crouch, zeroing in on Carlos' glasses when he removes them to rub smudges from the lenses and pushes them haphazardly back onto his face. The pterodactyl looks terrifyingly like it's considering having some nefarious way with the glasses. Carlos slowly stands and steps back, unpocketing his iPhone and taking once-in-a-lifetime video all the while. Rocks shift underfoot. He may be hyperventilating.

A shrub across the road rustles, the pterodactyl’s focus snaps to it and Carlos removes his gaze from the dinosaur for long enough to notice that the streets are deserted. They’re also covered in empty sunscreen bottles, which is unexpected because the fine for littering in Night Vale is 5 ounces of flesh per piece of trash. The shrub shakes more violently and emits clouds of gray-green gas that stink of necrotic tissue. Seemingly intrigued, the pterodactyl stalks forward hunched low to the ground and Carlos gets a perfect shot of scapulae shifting under skin and fur. He feels like he’s just had a religious experience.

With a metallic roar, something the size of a house cat throws itself from inside the shrub at the pterodactyl, trailing toxic fumes. It clamps jaws the width of its body on the distal wing joint, wrenching itself back and forth and streaking the limb with the red of freshly oxygenated blood, which confirms that it has erythrocytes, and Carlos is ecstatic. He’s less ecstatic when the pterodactyl gives a mighty shake, throws off its attacker and the shape skids to a stop a meter to his left. _Journal of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering_ , Carlos speed reads before quite realizing that it’s the possessed book he’d clamped down in his laboratory. It flutters its cover weakly and gives off a few sparks.

With a snort, the pterodactyl opens its wings and heaves itself in the air. Carlos barely ducks in time to avoid a blow from its tail, but makes sure to cradle his iPhone securely to his chest to catch every last second of its flight patterns he can. Its wings sweep in powerful arcs, lifting it higher and higher like the kite Carlos’ cousin Anna lost when the neighborhood bullies had cut the string. It turns, soaring to Carlos’ left over the Dog Park—

Something great and dark, cresting like a wave, is rising up from the Dog Park, frothing and crackling and groaning, tossing the pterodactyl like a raft in the clutches of a sentient hurricane. It’s translucent, the color of reflected florescent light, its presence more felt as a bone-deep horror than seen. Carlos shakes, and the video blurs too badly to make anything out, which will frustrate him to no end later when he can’t clearly remember what he saw. In the span of 15 seconds it builds, breaks and drags the dinosaur down behind the Dog Park’s polished, black walls.

 _The Journal of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering_ clatters through a pile of misshapen sunscreen bottles. It appears, Carlos notices as he locks his phone’s screen, to have grown shark-like teeth. He stares at it. It gives the impression of staring back despite its lack of eyes. Or any way of receiving input from the outside, really. Presumably. Its subdued shuffling after being thrown suggests some somatosensory input…

Carlos has just seen a _location eat_ a long-extinct creature, and he’s been staring at an animate object for the past five minutes in a fog.

The adrenaline is wearing off. He rubs his eyes, turning toward his apartment. “I’m not crazy enough to try picking you up right now, chamuco,” he says to the journal which tilts to the left like a pug turning its head to one side. “I’ll come back with construction gloves after I hibernate. And… thanks… for not letting me get eaten.” Carlos feels silly, but the rabid journal seems to perk up under the praise, gnashing its paper jaws with more vigor. So that’s good.

He leaves before he can anthropomorphize it further, but as Carlos falls into bed a few blocks and minutes away he hears the joyful sound of sunscreen bottles being ripped to shreds.

*

V

“Hmmmmm,” says Officer Felicia of the Sheriff’s Secret Police. Her arms are crossed under a video-game-worthy chest. She taps the fingers of her right hand against her left elbow while Carlos tries not to calculate the strain it all must put on her spine. Really, her severe posture is impressive. “This is highly irregular.”

Her partner, whose name badge reads _Officer Etien_ , is the hobbit to Officer Felicia’s elf, including a lack of footwear. “It’s tradition!” he protests, drumming his toes in agitation.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Carlos says reasonably. Behind him, the chain affixing Chamuco to his lab wall rattles. The officers peer over and around Carlos curiously, but he refuses to startle, suspecting that any sign of fear will be exploited. Also, Carlos welded the chain to the wall himself and pierced the steel end securely through the journal’s spine. It’s fine, it’s safe, there’s no way it could get free—

Carlos glances over his shoulder and gets an impression of paper teething on an empty soda can. He turns back in relief and jumps at Officer Felicia and Etien’s shark grins. Dammit.

“Everyone provides collateral for election season,” Officer Etien explains sweetly.

“Yes, but my family doesn’t live here,” says Carlos for the third time.

“That’s illegal,” Officer Felicia snaps.

Carlos runs over the municipal laws he’d memorized out of self-preservation, or at least the ones that hadn’t been redacted. “…No, it isn’t.” He’s 90% certain. Voting for the ‘correct’ candidate as established by the City Council each term, yes; surrendering a family member for incarceration until you voted ‘correctly,’ not specified.

Officer Felicia flicks her fingers dismissively, chest defying gravity. Officer Etien drums his hairy toes again. Neither looks the least repentant for their outright lies about the law, which is not surprising from any police officer the country over, but still. Carlos was hoping this would be one way in which Night Vale would differ from the other towns in which he’s resided.

Struck with sudden inspiration, Carlos says, “Why would you need collateral from me in the first place? Outsiders can’t vote in Night Vale elections.”

“Really?” drawls Officer Felicia.

Carlos quickly recalls a section that was covered in black grease pencil. “By-law 276, clause D,” he says with as straight a face as he can manage.

The officers exchange a look, then immediately perk up.

“Of course!” Officer Etien says, thumbs in his pockets and beaming proudly at Carlos in the way a parent would if their six-year-old got a gold star on a spelling quiz.

“Commendable work,” says Officer Felicia seriously, removing a rubber stamp and a small, blank card from pockets otherwise invisible, shadowed as they are by mammary protrusions of Barbie proportions. “Normally these are given for narking—”

“Dutifully reporting suspicious activity,” Officer Etien corrects. He may actually have pointed hobbit ears.

“—yes, and that,” she continues, blithe. “But part of being an alert citizen is knowing what laws are there to break, and we’re impressed. Congratulations!”

Carlos takes the card. _Alert Citizen Card_ , it reads at the top, with five blank boxes underneath. The middlemost square has a Hello Kitty stamp and Officer Felicia’s signature underneath in blood. He thanks them, lets them shake his hand and says his goodbyes. He won’t be able to vote, of course, but even if elections weren’t rigged Carlos wouldn’t have the first idea who to vote for.

“RrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrr,” growls Chamuco contentedly. Carlos smiles, gives him a block of wood to chew through, and gets back to work.

*

Lily Chang from Night Vale Community College’s geology department shrugs, sipping on her Oreo milkshake. “I think the more profound question is, why do you feel the need for there to be damage after an earthquake, Carlos?”

Carlos’ left eye twitches. His incisors clamp down on his spoon’s overly long stem. It and the sundae bowl came pre-chilled to keep his ice cream from melting for as long as possible, and his teeth now ache. He swallows carefully, fudge gumming up his palate until he downs some water, then clears his throat. She’s a fellow scientist, he reminds himself. Appeal to the scientific method. “According to my lifetime of observations, damage is an unavoidable effect of earthquakes. Crumbled buildings, highways twisted like ribbon, rubble crushing people to death…”

“Oh?” she says with polite interest.

“Yes.” Would it help if he pulled up some photos?

Ms. Chang shrugs again. “I’ve never observed anything like that.” She adjusts her glasses. “It must be stressful,” she determines clinically.

Carlos hums an affirmative, giving up. To Ms. Chang seismology is as abstract and leisurely an area of study as literary theory, as evidenced by her casual phone call at half past eleven this morning to inform him of yesterday’s 150 meter depth 9.1 Mw earthquake at the elementary school. Cheerfully, she invited him to look over the data at the White Sand Ice Cream Shop. Carlos ran out the door and down the street still holding a flask of acid, heart in his throat, dreading the carnage he would find and collapsing in relief at the familiar sight of children running happily between monkey bars, bloodstone circles and swing sets. The panic bait-and-switch nearly made him throw up. If such a visceral terror of earthquakes is that far out of Ms. Chang’s experience, Carlos definitely lacks the communicative ability to convey it.

“More water?” the helpful server asks on his rounds past the table, coming to a perfect catwalk twist in stilettos and a glittery, mermaid-cut gown. The sight of a normal drag queen soothes Carlos’ nerves.

“Yes, please,” he says with a fragile smile, lifting his refilled glass to him and Ms. Chang before sipping.

“So what’ll you do with your insurance check?” she asks brightly. “I think I’ll invest in a newer seismograph.”

Well, at least that’s apt. And practical. Carlos mulls over the question and the morality thereof, staring absently out the front window where the sun is beating down on a meltingly beautiful day. Then he ducks down behind the opposite side of their table, crouching beside Ms. Chang’s chair.

She lifts an eyebrow at him as the bell on the front door chimes.

“Welcome to White Sand Ice Cream Shop! Today’s special flavor is chocolate chip dragonfruit and rose. Would you like a sample?”

“Hide me,” Carlos hisses, nearly stepping on the end of his lab coat while shuffling to one side. He breaks his fall on his left palm, gritting his teeth against an exclamation of pain. He hadn’t realized he was still gripping the sundae spoon and has likely bruised his thumb, but at least it didn’t make too much noise.

“Sure,” says Cecil the stalker, beaming as he takes the tiny sample spoon. He gives a shiver of delight which Carlos wholly does not understand, his own sample of the stuff having been vile.

Ms. Chang’s gaze moves idly between the man at the counter and the one using her as a shield. She grins and murmurs, “You two’d be so cute together,” into her milkshake glass.

Carlos has never before seen someone manage to stir a milkshake maliciously. “Please, please, _please_ just help,” he begs, in horror of a repeat of Arby’s.

She flicks her manicured-but-chipped nails at his nose, pointing him at the restroom with a hand on his shoulder and not letting go of her grip until Cecil is distracted. Carlos dashes, lab coat whipping out behind him like the cape of the most ineffective superhero in the world.

It’s not precisely that he dislikes his stalker, Carlos thinks, squinting against the harsh light that reflects off the tile and chrome. ‘Stalker’ isn’t quite the term, but there’s a lexical gap, a lack of a specific word for, ‘person who doesn’t physically follow one around, but feels creepily proprietary about one’s hair and seems to know through methods uncanny about the progress of one’s research, which said person shares on public radio while contemplating one’s purported perfection.’ Carlos should coin that word.

But yes, Carlos doesn’t dislike his not-quite-a-stalker, who is practically tame by Night Vale standards. However, as a big-city introvert, Carlos feels most at home in the disregard of a community that truly can’t be assed to care about its fellow man. Night Vale’s small-community, intense, controllingly benign interest in Carlos’ life is maybe the most awkward aspect of living here, and the velvet voice swaying an easily-swayed public toward Telly the barber’s expatriation is at the foundation of it all.

In short, Cecil seems like a decent guy when he isn’t turning their virtually nonexistent association into accidental ammunition against the anonymity Carlos craves. Which is every day from 7 to 11 P.M.

And Carlos’ avoidance certainly doesn’t have anything to do with how he hasn’t had a date since his last boyfriend broke up with him six years ago, nope. He sighs, giving himself an unimpressed look in the mirror, and eases the restroom door open a crack to peer outside.

Ms. Chang is alone at their table, sipping the last of her milkshake noisily through her straw. “You’re a smooth operator,” she says when Carlos slinks back into his seat, ears between his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he responds, face on fire. The rest of the shop is trying to look like they’re not eavesdropping. His sundae is soup and he’d left the spoon by the restroom sink, so he picks up the bowl and sips. At least it hides his face.

She wrinkles her nose at his behavior and pointedly plops her straw into his bowl. “He wanted to ask you about the moon, something for his show.”

…Do people in Night Vale stargaze with their significant others? That can’t be it, Carlos eventually concludes, mostly because it seems a terribly indirect come-on from the man who actually compared him to a summer’s day on air on Monday night.

The server— _Liam_ , says his name tag, the color of which matches his heels—approaches with a lemonade. “Compliments of an admirer,” he says with a wink.

Of course it is. Carlos stares into its ice cubes as Liam moves on.

Ms. Chang coughs delicately. “Fun fact: Did you know that the City Council grants media personalities clairvoyance for the duration of their working hours? For instance, someone who works as, say, a radio show host, receives updates psychically from the council and reporters in the field to facilitate municipally-approved reporting.” She skewers Carlos with a side eye. “You gonna drink that?”

Carlos pushes the lemonade toward her. “So, if a given person wanted not to be reported on…” he says slowly.

She nods, taking the lemon wedge slotted onto the side of the glass and squeezing the juice into her eyes like eye drops. “You look kind of stressed, Carlos. You should take more breaks coincidentally from 7 to 11 o’clock.”

He’s so grateful he could fall to the floor and kiss her hand. He tells her this instead of doing so and she grins and tells him to spend his insurance check on a spa weekend and a salon that can fix his hair. Carlos laughs, says he’s about as likely to donate it to Focus on the Family, and they banter until Carlos forgets to be embarrassed.

Lily’s pretty alright, even if she doesn’t believe in the existence of mountain ranges for some reason.

*

 _Why_ would anyone schedule a weekly green market _with no produce_?

One vendor crosses his arms as Carlos continues to stare in incredulity. “May I help you, sir?”

Carlos blinks and shakes his head. “Apparently not.”

They both snort in disgust at the other’s behavior and go their separate ways.

*

VI

“Chamuco, stay!” Carlos holds his palm out flat and takes three slow steps backward across his postage stamp front yard. The lavender shrubs rustle grumpily. Off his chain for the first time, the journal wiggles in place, but ultimately doesn’t dash away. Carlos breaks into a grin and reaches into the worker’s tool belt pouch he’d lined with plastic, drawing out a chunk of raw steak. Chamuco shifts in place faster, hopping onto his spine once, but heeds Carlos’ still-extended palm. A few more seconds and Carlos tells him, “Good boy,” and throws the bloody meat. Chamuco tears into it with vicious satisfaction, even though he has no taste buds. It must be the texture, Carlos thinks as he pumps a fist at his success.

“Whatcha got there, Mr. Scientist?” Old Woman Josie’s voice calls out from the street. She has one forearm draped out the window of a fire engine red convertible with the top down. Despite this, not a single hair on her head is out of place. A pair of prescription Ray Bans slides down her nose.

“It’s part of my reference library. It breaks any equipment I try to use to determine how it’s animated.” He says so happily enough, holding up another piece of meat and grinning as the journal spins on the edge of its spine in excitement. “His name’s Chamuco.”

Old Woman Josie snorts. “Is that your scientific theory for how it moves by itself?”

Shrugging and dropping the second beef scrap, Carlos says, “I might as well call him a little devil; there’s no better explanation at the moment.”

“Catholics.” Old Woman Josie rolls her eyes. “Buncha superstitious, ignorant morons, believing there’s only one big force of evil, and you can keep it away by bein’ nice.”

“I’m agnostic,” Carlos protests weakly, knowing it won’t change her rant one bit. At least hers isn’t the usual anti-Catholicism line he has to put up with from the adamant atheist colleagues who diss Carlos’ family every Christmas. Catholics aren’t neurotic enough, Old Woman Josie criticizes like it’s a vitamin C deficiency, solved easily if they’d just knock back more orange juice and common sense. Carlos can’t decide if the result is refreshing or twice as irritating, which feels like a metaphor for his life recently.

Carlos feels a tugging on his sneaker. Chamuco sneaked up on him and is now chewing on the hem of his jeans and drooling all over his laces.

“Now that is adorable,” Old Woman Josie interrupts herself to exclaim. She tugs out a camera that looks about eighty years old and whose flash leaves a cloud of smoke hanging in the air. “There we go. Didn’t I tell you things’d work out with your homicidal books? Now, you come over for tonight’s roast and I’ll give you a copy.”

Carlos nods an affirmative and says a thank you over the revving of her engine. She flicks the Ray Bans back into place and shoots off down the street like a drag racer, fishtailing a bit on a curve and cackling.

Chamuco shuffles away toward the lavender shrubs and starts a growling contest with them.

Carlos puts his non-bloody hand on a hip. “How are you drooling without salivary glands?” he wonders aloud.

*

 _Bridge Magic needs YOU!_ The poster is the sort of kaleidoscope of colors favored by pride groups or people who want desperately to look cheerful. _Help a team of Real Engineers make the new Night Vale Municipal Drawbridge! Should the bridge be over a river? What material should we make the towers out of? What currency should tolls be charged in? Let your voice be heard!_ Mounted below it is a wooden box with crooked hinges affixing the top flap, spray painted _sUGgesTioNs_. There is a pad of paper with a pen through its spiral spine hanging from a shoelace, which is tied onto a nail beside the box.

Arms full of groceries, Carlos pauses at the sad little box. His demented younger sister once made an entranceless birdhouse out of popsicle sticks and hot glue that looked better than this. He feels sorry for it and really, really hopes the self-proclaimed engineers didn’t make it. Feeling kind of like a rebel, Carlos glaces around, shifts his bags to his right arm and scribbles a quick note about counterweights and energy efficiency. His spiky cursive will never win any penmanship prizes, but it does look professional in an effect similar to doctors’ scrawl. With another sweep to make sure the coast is clear, he tears the paper out, folds and creases it messily, shoves it into the box and feigns nonchalance.

“HELLO THERE!” says the woman standing directly behind Carlos’ shoulder with enthusiasm.

“AGH!” responds Carlos.

The woman grins and takes Carlos’ hand, shaking it enthusiastically. She holds up a clip board, also enthusiastically. “Juanita Jefferson, here with Night Vale or Nothing! We’re collecting signatures for an environmental petition. Could you spare a few minutes?”

Carlos blinks up at her from the sidewalk, where he’s just managed to save his eggs from smashing against the concrete. Assorted produce rolls away from him, under rows of carts and into the street. Ms Jefferson grins with more forceful enthusiasm. Carlos believes he knows why she’s the one out collecting signatures.

“Uh, sure, just give me a sec,” he says, shoving lettuce and avocados back into flimsy plastic.

“Great!” She bounces on her sensible heels, then stops.

Carlos looks sadly at a burst tomato, finds a trash can and returns, wiping fingers on his jeans. He picks his bags up. “Okay, so what’s this…” He blinks.

Ms Jefferson is standing, slack-faced and no longer enthusiastic with dark circles under her eyes. Her breathing is shallow, she isn’t blinking and when Carlos steps closer to check her pulse, he can just hear a weak, high voice mumbling, “ _t r e e s…_ ” more like a keen than a whisper.

Alarmed, Carlos is reaching for his phone to dial 911 when Ms Jefferson gives a full bodied shudder, shakes her head decisively and snaps her enthusiastic smile back into place.

“Oh, boy, how many times does that have to happen, huh?” she laughs, slapping Carlos on the back. “The hazards of working with nature! Wouldn’t give ‘em up for anything.”

“You just had a fit,” Carlos explains slowly, not putting his phone away.

Ms Jefferson laughs again, hand jauntily on her hip. “I know, right? It’s been happening ever since I touched those metallic trees by the library. They’re really something, and City Council is just gonna let developers chop them down and build a strip mall. Next to the library! Talk about noise pollution, huh?”

Carlos chews his lip. “Aren’t those the trees that set all of those kites on fire during the summer camp kite flying competition?”

“Yeah, they’re super great!” She pushes her clipboard under Carlos’ nose. “So can Night Vale or Nothing! count on your support?”

Carlos is stalling for time when his phone rings. He has never been happier to answer a call from his scathing older sister in his life.

“ _Yo, nerd. Amá keeps asking me what you’ve been doing that’s so important that she hasn’t heard from you in two weeks. Would it kill you to call her once in a while—_ ”

“Oh my god, Teresa, is she okay?” Carlos’ frown feels exaggerated, but he’s not a natural actor. He holds up a hand apologetically to Ms Jefferson, who nods in enthusiastic sympathy.

“ _There’s nothing wrong with her, what’s your malfunction, Madama Butterfly?_ ”

That grimace, on the other hand, is one-hundred percent unfeigned. “Do you need me to drive over? I can be there in,” he checks his watch, “three hours.” He gestures apologetically to Ms Jefferson and hurries over to his car, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he loads his bags into the trunk.

“ _Seriously_ ,” Teresa says in a flat voice. “ _You’re using me as an excuse to be a shut-in. What, were people being nice to you? Was someone phallically-challenged hitting on you? Did a friendly neighbor invite you to a party?_ ”

Carlos slams the car door shut, feeling twelve years old. “Shut up. It was a cult member trying to recruit me, alright?”

“ _Suuuure, machetón_.” Teresa’s drawl comes out distorted when he switches to speaker phone so he can start the car and pull out of the parking lot. “ _What cult?_ ”

“Shinto-Buddhists for the Flying Spaghetti Monster of Latter-day Saints,” he snarks, continuing before his sister can get going on another tear. “I’ll call her when I get home in five minutes. Bye!” He jabs the end call button, cutting Teresa off mid-subject, a noun phrase with a few choice adjectives about his character.

Carlos sighs. That could have gone better. At this rate, Thanksgiving is going to be a joy.

There’s a cactus serenading passerby at an intersection on his way home, but Carlos can’t even work up more than cursory scientific curiosity about it.

*

“Groceries, Doctor Who DVDs from Best Buy, gas, groceries, pharmacy, phone, pizza delivery, gas, groceries, groceries,…” Carlos nods absently, finger moving down his bank statement’s summary of deductions for this month. “Internet, gas, electric, groceries, NVCR…” He stops, squinting at the abbreviation. He runs it through his head a few times, lips shaping the letters, but draws a blank. He’s not in the red by any means—the several thousand dollars of insurance money from the earthquake that wasn’t has arrived, along with more uneasy guilt—but still. It’s a $100 deduction, on top of the $60 he has to pay per month for an imaginary newspaper.

Just remembering that phone call makes Carlos grit his teeth. He runs a hand through his hair and lets a breath out slowly, finishing his toast and coffee and laying the dishes in the sink.

When he opens the front door, Chamuco perks up and swivels his way, gnashing in sleepy discontent when Carlos says they’ll go for a walk later.

“Good morning, Carlos!” chirps Hiromi over the hedge around her front garden. Her son is drawing on her empty driveway with oversized chalk, looking for all the world like a normal human child except for the fact that his skin is tinged green. Carlos would ask about that in the interests of science, but there's really no way to phrase it that doesn't make him sound racist. Speciesist? Hybridist? Gauche, in any case. “How are you?”

“I’m pretty good. You?”

“Wonderful!” She gives the impression of smiling, though of course she can’t. “The monarch butterflies are coming in more and more.” This seems a non-sequitur until she snaps out and plucks one from the air and holds it to her mandibles. Crunching through its wings and swallowing is the work of less than a second, after which she coughs delicately.

Forcing himself not to think of entomological research opportunities, Carlos holds up his bank statement and its ripped envelop. “Do you know what NVCR stands for? This says I’ve paid them $100.”

“Oh, yes, Night Vale Community Radio had their pledge drive last weekend.”

“…But I didn’t volunteer to donate,” he says. Even if he’d been so inclined, he’s on the down low from anyone associated with broadcasting.

“Well, of course,” Hiromi says, tilting her head in confusion. She holds out another butterfly to her son, who stuffs it whole into his mouth. “Pledge drives don’t work if they are voluntary.”

A statement Carlos cannot refute, that.

He says goodbye and crosses the street, scratching the back of his neck. Retrieving Chamuco’s leash from its hook and his steak from the fridge, Carlos wakes the journal up and takes them once around the block. With no one to ask if more unexpected charges will be coming his way—such payments are perfectly expected by normal Night Vale citizens after all—Carlos decides to leave the insurance money in his bank account to pay for them. Decided, he smiles and starts teaching Chamuco to play dead. It involves more gleeful fireballs than Carlos had envisioned, but if ever there was a place for casual arson, it’s their new home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak Spanish, but am trying my best to research. If you are a Spanish speaker and I've written something ass-weird or just awkward, please let me know in the comments. Any longer passages of Spanish will (hopefully) be translated by my father-in-law, who is a native speaker, thank god.
> 
> ALSO, for chapters 4 and on I may need the occasional bit of dialogue in Russian. Any speakers out there willing to translate?

**Author's Note:**

> A while back I couldn't find any long retelling-all-the-episodes-from-Carlos'-PoV stories, and I accidentally this fic.
> 
> Plan is for each chapter to cover roughly the same timespan as 3 episodes, through the end of Carlos' first year in Night Vale. No update schedule, because I write kinda slowly, but I will try to keep up with this.


End file.
